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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Keeping Our Eyes on the Movement




photo MoralFreedomSummer_zps222d3de8.jpg


One of the things that for me is disheartening is the lack of national attention being focused on the Moral Mondays grass-roots fusion movement that is growing throughout the south.

We cannot depend on the Traditional Media (TM) to carry the message. While TM sources are willing to pay tribute to civil rights history events, and commemorations for fallen martyrs, they are far less apt to give headlines to, and follow the groundswell of support for the pushback against Republican repression of voting rights and civil rights.

We have the responsibility to do the work carrying the message, using our social media – email, facebook, twitter, tumblr, you tube and on blogs.

It is not a matter of the information being unavailable.  

I can’t begin to tell you how many political people I know who failed to learn about the 80,000 plus people who went to Raleigh and marched back in February.

At that time, the Freedom Summer 2014 organizing was announced.  Well – that time is here – Now.  

Local media in North Carolina are covering this summer’s events.

NC coverage:

Moral Monday: Fiery speeches mark rally at Corpening Plaza

The Moral Monday rally in the city’s Corpening Plaza came after the first day of a hearing in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem on the state’s controversial new election law. The state NAACP sponsored the event.

“We are going to fight and litigate in court against what is unmistakably the worse attack on voter rights since Jim Crow,” Barber said. “It’s a blood fight. The hands that once picked cotton now pick a president, a governor and the legislature. Now (they) want to change the rules.”

Barber questioned the motivations of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate Pro Tem Phil Berger for passing and signing the bill into law, saying that it rolls back voting rights for North Carolinians.

“We are going to fight for the rights that come through blood,” Barber said, referring to the civil-rights activists who died in the 1960s for supporting of voting rights for blacks.

600 attend Moral Monday rally in Winston-Salem

About 600 people attended a rally in Corpening Plaza Monday afternoon during which the Rev. William Barber, president of the N.C. NAACP, and other speakers called for the repeal of the state’s voter ID law.

The rally came after the first day of a hearing on the state’s controversial new election law.

“We are going to fight and litigate in court against what is unmistakably the worse attack on voter rights since Jim Crow,” Barber said. “It’s a blood fight. The hands that once picked cotton now pick a president, a governor and the legislature. Now (they) want to change the rules.”

The crowd cheered and chanted, “Forward together, not one step back,” after Barber’s 20-minute speech.

After the rally, Kismet Loftin-Bell of Winston-Salem said she was inspired by Barber’s message and his call for people to register and vote in the November elections.

“It is absolutely important just so the process of democracy works,” she said.

‘Moral Monday’ hits the road to Winston-Salem

Winston-Salem, N.C. – Nearly 1,000 people rallied outside the federal courthouse in Winston-Salem on Monday after state NAACP lawyers argued against the state’s voter ID law, the organization said in a statement.

The rally was the first “Moral March to the Polls” effort as organizers move from weekly protests at the General Assembly to registering voters for the Nov. 4 election.

NAACP lawyers are working with attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice, the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union to ask a judge for a preliminary injunction to temporarily delay a law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls and eliminate same-day voter registration.

“Let us not forget that HB 589 is not about voter ID and voter integrity,” Rev. William Barber, state NAACP president, said in a statement. “It is about the intentional identification of voters that the extremists feel may not support their political ideology and the conjuring up and passing of laws to suppress and exclude those voters’ rights and opportunities at the ballot box.”

Challenge heard to NC voter ID law

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – A federal hearing is underway in Winston-Salem today over the state’s controversial Voter Information Verification Act, commonly known as the “Voter ID” law.

U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder is hearing arguments on whether to block many of the state’s voting law provisions from taking effect during the Nov. 4 general election in a case that’s being closely watched across North Carolina and throughout the country.

The Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, was among the first at the courthouse this morning.

“This is the worst attempt to abridge and suppress the right to vote that we’ve seen since the days of Jim Crow,” said Barber.

The NAACP has filed three lawsuits against the act. However, they will not be heard until next year. Barber says the suits are not only about requiring voters to have an ID, but also shortening early voting, eliminating same-day registration and doing away with pre-registration for minors.

Students Joining Battle to Upend Laws on Voter ID: College Students Claim Voter ID Laws Discriminate Based on Age


WASHINGTON – Civil rights groups have spent a decade fighting requirements that voters show photo identification, arguing that this discriminates against African-Americans, Hispanics and the poor. This week in a North Carolina courtroom, another group will make its case that such laws are discriminatory: college students.

Joining a challenge to a state law alongside the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department, lawyers for seven college students and three voter-registration advocates are making the novel constitutional argument that the law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The amendment also declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.”

Thanks to a phone call from Onomastic I didn’t miss the live coverage of the kickoff event for voter registration in Winston-Salem.  

If you did – the entire rally is here:


Live Stream video

Sister Yara Allen opened with a rousing version of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round”.  

Rev. Barber’s fiery speech, referenced above comes at about 48:00 in the video.

If you aren’t following Moral Monday Freedom Summer, or the movement, please bookmark their pages.

Spread the word.  Support the movement:

Moral Mondays twitter

Moral Freedom Summer

North Carolina NAACP Moral Mondays Freedom Summer

Donate, become a member NC NAACP

Keep your eyes on the prize of our freedoms.

Cross-posted from Black Kos


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 12 Comments

12 comments

  2. JanF

    I have been following this story closely because it is so important. Every time we can get a voter suppression law delayed, it gives our side more time to prepare for the next election.

    Let’s try that video:

     

  4. JanF

    Ari Berman: North Carolina’s ‘Monster’ Voting Law Challenged in Federal Court

    Nearly fifty years after marching for voting rights in Alabama, [Carolyn] Coleman testified in federal court today in Winston-Salem against North Carolina’s new voting restrictions, which have been described as the most onerous in the nation. The law mandates strict voter ID, cuts early voting by a week and eliminates same-day registration, among many other things. After the bill’s passage, “I was devastated,” Coleman testified. “I felt like I was living life over again. Everything that I worked for for the last fifty years was being lost.”

    The federal government and civil rights groups, including the ACLU and the North Carolina NAACP, asked Judge Thomas Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee for the Middle District of North Carolina, to enjoin key provisions of the law before the 2014 midterms under Section 2 of the VRA. They’re specifically targeting the cuts to early voting, the elimination of same-day registration during the early voting period and the prohibition on counting provisional ballots accidentally cast in the wrong precinct. (The new voter ID law, unlike the above provisions, doesn’t go into effect until 2016, although the state is doing a “test run” in 2014 where poll workers can ask for photo ID although voters don’t have to provide it.) The hearing is expected to last until later in the week, with a decision in the next month or so.

    From the hearing:

    According to expert witness Charles Stewart, a political scientist at MIT, if the law had been in effect in 2012, “over 30,000 African-Americans who registered during the same-day registration period would have been unable to register during that period, almost 300,000 [black] early voters would have been shoehorned into more congested early voting and Election Day voting sites, and at least 2,000 African-American voters would have had their out-of-precinct votes left uncounted.”

    The hearing is for a preliminary injunction on the provisions until the case is heard in July 2015.

    North Carolina would never have been able to put this law in place if the Roberts Court had not gutted the VRA. The state would have had to get pre-approval and it likely would have been denied.

    After the hearing:

    After the hearing, eight hundred North Carolinians gathered in downtown Winston-Salem for a “Moral March to the Polls” event protesting the law. “I know it’s hot out here,” [Rev. William] Barber told the crowd. “But it’s going to be hotter if you let them take our vote away.”

  5. Diana in NoVa

    If it weren’t for blogs, I’d never have known about this. The trad. med. are far too busy covering the important news about Beyonce’s baby bump or “Prince George’s First Year” (for Gawd’s sake) to pay any attention to boring old voter suppression.

    I’ll start sharing Moral Monday diaries on Facebook. Still haven’t quite got the hang of Twitter.

  6. Diana in NoVa

    I’ve resumed posting a tweet-per-day about writing, but I swear, I don’t know why some people are so enamored of Twitter. As far as I can tell it consists of people like me posting entirely unrelated tweets. I don’t see anything like the give-and-take we enjoy with diaries and comments on blogs.

    But perhaps that’s because I am CLUELESS.

    Totally understand about summer–if you have some time in the fall, perhaps you can “edutweet” me then.

    In the meantime, I’ll try to think of something intelligent to say in a diary for Moosylvania. My problem is I can’t think of anything to write about that hasn’t already been covered thoroughly by others.

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